From the castle of Ceausescu
- the former, fallen (executed) dictator of Romania built himself a phantasy
castle which is now called the Parlament Palace - via the "bolshoij
prospect / Grand Boulevard" to a gigantic Apartment block at the
other side of this axial street and back again towards this idyosyncratic
megalo-construction built in the 1980s, I ride the bicycle in the middle
of the one way lanes against traffic, against and with the sun without
holding the streering wheel.

The outcome of this rather dangerous
enterprise (Do I have a death wish? or am I just an ecolo-political romantic/
rule-disobeyer) is a video of 22 minutes made for the Biennial of Bucharest.
(2nd edition, though there was never a first edition keeping to the tradition
of local surrealisms - yes there have been many, and some just read below:
PS2)

The chosen path on the axis of Ceausescu's
power translated into urbanism is quite extraordinary in its size and
symetry in a city that didn't undergo a Hausmannisation program earlier.
It not only comes with this big long and totally streight Avenue - called
Bulevardul Unirii -, the delirious kitch palace (it is said to be the
second biggest bulding in the world after the Pentagon) that combines
domestic architecture with state grandeurism but also an anachronistic
housing ring reserved for ministers, administrators and his securitade
special police unite. The irony has it, that my host, the Bucharest Biennia,l
puts me in such a nice appartment directly opposite the palace, with a
stunning view. The apartment belongs today to a real estate firm by the
name of RomVision (no, it is real and not internet related) that runs
these units as upscale hotels.

PS1: Romania was the
birth place of Emil Cioran, an excentric existentialist poet later emigrating
to France. As a young man, he was said to have suffered insomnia to the
point of immanent death. He started bicycling and safed thus his life.
The title Apprentice in the Sun is taken from a famous / not so famous
small drawing of Marcel Duchamps showing a bicycle rider. (see my
light box:) from 1914.

PS2: Bucharest has a
dog problem, a stray dog problem. Ten thousands of stray dogs are in the
streets and thousands of people get bitten every year, I was told. This
year, a Japanese business man was killed by a stray dog. (see the MSNBC
article "Romania to neuter stray dogs after man killed" http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11101851/).
The article gives you an idea how many dogs are in this city: "Bucharest
city hall said it would bring 1,000 foreign medical students to sterilize
stray dogs." More poetically, I was told in three words with nice
accent that "dogs hate bicycles" - a new insight
for me. The Biennial assistant added: "Cars and bicycles enrage dogs."
The Bucharest artist Catalin Rulea confirmed this independently: he was
attacked several times by dogs while riding the bicycle. The last time,
when I had the "pleasure" to live in a city with lots of stray
dogs in the streets - Moscow 1996.- I was attacked by 4 dogs, bitten and
then subjected to the even more dangerous and cumbersome injections from
Russian hospitals over the period of nearly a month (I had to bribe them
and made sure they would use new needles) - so my dog -paranoia is a bit
justified. (apart from that , dogs don't like me either, they smell my
fear)

PS3: To all this, currently,
while I'm here in Bucharest, larger parts of the city are under quarantine
due to a massive bird flue outbreak. see: "Thousands
of people quarantined in Bucharest as Romania battles bird flu" (http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060522/wl_afp/healthfluromania_060522183100)
(from this article:" "About 40 streets have been blocked"
in the Luica quarter, Inimaroiu said, urging residents to stay calm.")
The Harald Ttribune writes of 60.000 people quarantined.
( "A cordon surrounded seven streets, and similar measures were in
effect in another neighborhood of the city, affecting about 60,000 people.")
Officials from the World Health Organization said they believed it to
be the first time that the movements of so many people were restricted
because of bird flu. The Romanian authorities said the tough measures
were necessary when the virus threatened an urban area, an assertion WHO
disputes. http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/24/news/romania.php).
This disagreement is quite an interestng spin to the countries recent
authoritarian history. My friend Barry Schwabsky asks: "Maybe the
future will be, not the national security state, but the health security
state." I guess it is and has been always the same, thinking about
the history of Nazism where many arguments to surpress people had been
hygenic, saniitary and security based.

this is a police man
who first yealled at me in Romanian.. and hten used his wissel to make
me stop

a word by Gregory Volk on this project form the press release of his group show at Tanja Bonakdar, 2007

"Rainer Ganahl’s video The Apprentice in the Sun shows one of his precarious bicycle rides performed against ferocious city traffic (this time in Bucharest), presented along with a neon work inspired by a Marcel Duchamp drawing with the same title. The Bucharest ride is one in an ongoing series of “performative exercises,” in which Ganahl cycles between two historically and politically significant locations in a metropolis, always against motorized traffic and in an utterly vulnerable position as he is riding free-handed while holding his camera above. Ganahl is like a Tour de France rider who has taken a very wrong turn, or a stuntman who has inexplicably moved from the circus into the city. Going against the grain as a Western visitor in post-Cold War Romania also highlights the prevalence of intercultural misunderstanding in this era, but what’s most alarming (and darkly humorous) is how a simple bicycle trip becomes a life-threatening act. Ganahl’s work also subtly calls for risk-taking and new directions in both an ecological and political sense. "